


wake me from my nightmare, back into my day dream

by chancellor_valdez



Category: La Reina del Sur (TV), Queen of the South (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Love Confessions, nightmares and kisses and love confessions? oh my!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 02:34:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chancellor_valdez/pseuds/chancellor_valdez
Summary: Teresa has another nightmare that leads to a much needed confession with James.





	wake me from my nightmare, back into my day dream

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, I woke up today and decided to write some much needed fluff. It's short, but I hope it's decent!

It wasn’t the first time she’d woken up screaming. 

She knew it probably wouldn’t be the last, not with the past haunting her the way it did. Not with so many ghosts always hovering at her shoulders. Sometimes they were memories she wished she could forget, played on a loop, becoming more horrifying and haunting the longer she was stuck in them. Her father, Brenda, Guero, looking at her with dead eyes and reaching for her with cold hands.

Sometimes they were memories that hadn’t happened yet, taunting her. Her father’s body was suddenly Pote dead at her feet, staring up at her with glassy eyes that didn’t see her. Guero’s face would morph into James, with his head in her lap and slowly bleeding out before she even knew he was gone. 

That’s what it was this time. James was the one not breathing in the back seat. He was the one that faded away in silence and left her grasping his shirt and begging him to come back. He couldn’t leave her too. Tears soak his shirt where she sobs into his chest, and he’s already so cold. He should never feel this cold, James was warm and soft when he touched her. This wasn’t her James.

And then he started to disappear in her hands. He just faded until there was nothing left and she was alone. 

The scream tore from her throat like an icy claw as she jolted awake. Someone was saying her name and touching her cheek, but all she could focus on was the pain in her lungs every time she tried to catch her breath and the tracks of tears still streaming down her cheeks and soaking the pillow beneath her head. She could feel her ghosts hiding in the shadows at the corner of the room and the ceiling was spinning down on her and she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread and fear saturating the air. 

She had to squeeze her eyes shut to stop the bile creping up her throat.

The hand on her cheek smoothed her sweaty hair back and she tried to focus on the physical feeling of warm hands against her skin. 

“Teresa, open your eyes. It’s okay. It’s all okay, it was just a nightmare. Open your eyes baby.” It was the softest whisper and she felt her heart calm without even realizing it. “Shhhhh, it’s okay. Come on, look at me.” She did.

“James?” His face came into focus and filled her vision, still soft from sleep, but alert with concern staring down at her. She grasped at his arm as if he would disappear into smoke and leave her all alone again. His skin was warm under her fingers, like it was supposed to be. It made her sob again. 

“Hey, no, it’s okay, come here.” He straightened them up and positioned her between his leg in his lap, with her head against his chest. One hand continued combing through her hair and the other held her as close to him as she could get. Her cheek pressed against his shirt letting the sound of his heartbeat lull her fear. “Just breathe with me.”

She tries to match his breathing, force air into her lungs as she feels his chest rise against her. They just sit like that for she doesn’t know how long. It’s just the two of them, wrapped around each other, breathing in time, with James’s soft voice steadily reassuring her. The darkness around them becomes a blanket instead of a threat and the ghosts watching from the shadows disappear. 

When the panic finally subsides and she can feel James warming the cold feeling in her chest she pulls back. It’s the third nightmare this month he’s had to guide her out of. But it’s the first time it’s taken her this long to come back from it. Four months since Guero died and it’s still finding new ways to torture her. Now her mind has turned to James, threatening her with the possibility of losing him the same way. Terrifying her with the idea of losing him at all. Because people never stay, not with her. 

James brings both of his hands up to cup her face and turn her gaze back up to his. Calloused thumbs wipe the tears from her cheeks. Sometimes she looks at him and finds herself afraid she’s still dreaming. The way he looks at her, the softness in his eyes when he sees her, and takes her in his hands, broken, bleeding past and all. He understands the darkness she locks away from everyone else, and the fear nobody knows she still struggles with, and he accepts it all and kisses her tears away when she lets him. 

It has to be a dream. Money changers from Sinaloa didn’t get happy endings with sicarios from Dallas. That much she should’ve known. It’s like part of her is living, waiting for the day he’s gone just like the last time. 

“You okay?”

She just nods. She’s never really okay, but that’s not what he means.

He pulls her forward enough to brush his lips against her forehead. “It was bad this time. Was it Guero again?”

She shakes her head. Not this time. Not the past few times.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He’s giving her an out like he always does, a chance to sweep in under the rug and fall back against the bed until she’s too tired to avoid the nightmares anymore. 

It’s what he used to do. She used to wake up to his thrashing next to her and the sounds of quiet whimpers as he shook. She’d wrap her arms around his shoulders until he woke up. He always told her it was nothing, until the night he admitted to her it was the little girl. He’d see her sometimes, burnt up in the explosion, just taunting him. 

She presses her palms against her eyes until she sees fireworks. “It was you.”

“What?”

“This time it was you, instead of Guero, in the back seat.” Realization dawns on him immediately, like a switch being flipped.

“I’m right here.” They’re so close, her still in his lap, that she can feel his breath on her cheeks when he talks, almost like an extra reassurance to what he’s saying. 

“But I’m scared that one day you won’t be, that you’ll leave.” Finally telling him out loud is enough to bring a few more tears to her eyes. This is what she’s afraid of. Losing him, in any way. It doesn’t matter if he dies, or steps back from her, or one day decides to really leave, they all end with his side of the bed next to her being cold and one more person fading away. 

“Why? I told you I’m not leaving you. I’m not going anywhere.”

The truth is right there behind her teeth, but saying it would make it real. Saying it would pull out the last brick in the wall protecting her. 

“The last man I loved said the same thing, and then he left me to the cartel, and now he’s dead. The men I love leave.”

His mouth falls open and his eyes flutter, like he’s taking a moment to process what she’s just said. It’s like he needs a minute to collect the fact that she loves him. It just lasts a second and then his eyes soften again and he tucks a stray curl behind her ear, just looking at her with so much of his own love. Because for two broken people like them, this is more than they ever thought they’d have. 

“I’m not Guero.” He’s holding her hand. “I will never leave you, okay? I’m not him.”

“Promise?” Her voice comes out sounding like a scared child. It’s almost how she feels. 

“I promise.” And she kisses him. It’s rough with emotion, but somehow still tender. Their lips press together lightly, but urgently, like they need to touch each and feel the other person as close to them as they can get, but they’re scared they’ll break. When she looks at him again he’s smiling, a soft curve of his lips she might miss if she didn’t know him. If she didn’t love him. She has to bite her lip to keep her own grin from overtaking her face. 

“I love you,” he whispers, like it’s his secret just for her.

She closes her eyes to soak it in. It had been so long since she felt this. This feeling of hope and safety and closeness flowing through her veins. This feeling of butterflies fluttering around her insides like she’s 16 again. This feeling of her heart beating for fast and so full that it might spring from her chest to be closer to him. She hasn’t felt this since Sinaloa, since before. And now she feels so lucky.

A year ago, sitting in a stolen car driven by some asshole in aviator sunglasses through the streets of Dallas, her stomach full of coke, she never would have thought that was the man that would bring her alive again. The one with the hard stare and the sniper shot that decided to protect her before he even knew her. She couldn’t predict that she’d go back for him, or that he’d lie for her, or that they’d become a team. She wouldn’t expect to care about him and depend on him and love him. But that’s where they ended up, here in this bedroom sharing I love you’s like secrets in the dark. 

She decides at that moment, that despite all the pain and blood staining her past, she wouldn’t trade it for the world, because it brought her him. 

“I love you too.” And then they’re both smiling and laughing and hugging each other. She threads her fingers through his messy hair and he presses sloppy kisses to her neck, and everything, in that one moment, is okay.


End file.
